Finviz is a great way to filter stocks. It’s free. It’s like Bloomberg-lite for the non-investment bankers. It shows all the stocks traded in the US (including foreign ADRs like HMC, PHG etc). Here is an exercise (as of 03/04/2018):
1) How many stocks are traded in the US (NYSE, AMEX, NASDAQ)? 7159
2) Of those 7,000+ stocks, how many are profitable? 2,766. Let’s agree that is pretty shocking that only 38% of publicly-traded companies make money.
3) Of those 2,700 companies , how many have a market cap >$2 billion: 1,402
4) Of those 1,400+ profitable companies with market cap > $2B, how many have forecasted positive EPS growth: 1,279
5) Of those 1,200, how many have a dividend yield over 2%? 472
6) Of those 470+, how many are trading above 200 day moving average? 195
7) Of those 195, how many have positive insider transactions? 14
So, there are only 14 companies out of 7,100 (0.2%) which meet these criteria.
- Positive net profit margin (only 38% of companies are profitable)
- Larger than $2Billion market cap (which is nothing, really)
- Positive EPS growth outlook (gotta be growing)
- Dividend yield over 2% (stable enough for them to give back earnings)
- Trading above their 200 days moving average (stock has momentum)
- Positive insider transactions (insiders are buying)
Of these, a few things come to mind:
- Five of these fourteen are small regional banks – probably prime targets for acquisition
- KKR – famed and fabled private equity firm – know how to make money in good and bad markets. They are trading at a P/E of 10. Is this a buy?
- LVS – this is one of the large casino holding companies. Perhaps one of the companies that could buy some of the troubled assets of WYNN
Let me know if you had any experiences working with Finviz.
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Looks like an awesome tool – how long does it take to apply your screens and where is the data sourced from?
Are you looking at 1 year of net profit or an average over time? I’d be interested in seeing how the analysis looks 1) when taking a multi-year approach and 2) replacing net profit (subject to accounting distortions like impairment) with a measure of cash flow. Thoughts?
Yes, the data is the 10K. I imagine it is 1 year time frame. You can figure out how to use it in 3 min, and all the data is there. It’s an initial pass – for real due diligence, need to get an analyst to download the information from Capital IQ and tweak-tweak-tweak the model.
Finviz is a great first step. Give it a try.
woah…this is a free tool? sold i will check it out!
Free, so easy to use. The map of the market is also, amazing.